Beckham is living the dream in Milan after dozing through a nightmare in LA

David Beckham will stay with Milan but can't pretend he was a hit in LA. Photograph: Antonio Calanni/AP

Vanity publishing is making a comeback, according to those who follow trends in the literary business, but who knew there was also a market for self-financed glorification in the top three of Serie A?

David Beckham, no less, is paying his own way at Milan, or to be strictly accurate, he is paying his own way into Milan; US$3m to grease the wheels of what the former England captain described as a "dream deal". God only knows what kind of dreams fill Becks' bedtimes but they must be more Stephen King than Sleeping Beauty if he thinks the agreement prolonging his stay in Italy is anything other than a gross insult to his ability and his dignity.

Sunday morning warriors pay for the privilege of playing footie. International midfielders do not. Still, it is undoubtedly a dream deal for Milan to get a great professional and global marketing icon for about a third of what Hull City paid Fulham for Jimmy Bullard in the last transfer window. No wonder the club's vice-president Adriano Galliani was generous in his praise for the player.

"Many players show their affection only through words. David Beckham is one of the few who has done so with his actions," he said. "He's made an incredible economic effort, paying a huge amount out of his own pocket."

Alas, Galliani wasn't so generous when it came to making a decent offer to the LA Galaxy for Beckham's services. Milan's opening bid was a (relative) pittance and it didn't get much better, at least not until the Englishman opened his own wallet to prompt the move.

The player will remain in Italy until the end of season, then return to California on 1 July to play in the Galaxy's remaining MLS games, then he will lead them into the play-offs, then he will buy himself out of his contract and return to Milan, then he will one day go back to the US to buy an MLS team of his own, then Sir Alex Ferguson will break down in tears before a roomful of journalists and confess he made the mistake of his life when he dismissed Posh as nothing more than a publicity-obsessed clotheshorse.

Only one of these predictions is fantasy although the rest might turn out to be, especially the one that involves Beckham returning to the States and leading the Galaxy to the play-offs – hard to imagine given the spiral of underachievement in his first two seasons. Even more difficult to imagine is that Bruce Arena, the Galaxy's coach and general manager, would disrupt his squad and his tactics to find a place for Beckham if his team were playing well when 1 July arrived. "If David is fit and in form, there's no argument that he's an excellent player," Arena said at the weekend. "He's going to have the opportunity to finish up with Milan and then come back and hopefully complete some unfinished business in MLS."

If you think that sounded less than enthusiastic, then you are hardly a member of an exclusive club. Arena is a flinty character who places performance ahead of reputation when it comes to team selection, but even he is required to stick to diplomatic courtesies. He cannot be blamed for that, but the rest of us should feel no such need to propagate the mythology of Beckham's American adventure. Yet that is precisely what has happened: from the day he arrived (and his "advisers" proclaimed a $250m deal), to the day he left for his "dream deal" in Milan.

In-between times, there was failure on the field, unsubstantiated claims about merchandise sales and mounting disillusionment among supporters and, eventually, in the player himself.The reality is that Beckham's move was an abject failure, professionally and personally. There is no shame in that but there is curious lack of self-confidence in the Englishman's insistence on portraying his latest career move as another chapter in the great masterplan.

We respect him already as a brilliant footballer and give or take the occasional indiscretion, a model citizen. We would respect him even more if he admitted that, like the rest of us, he is capable of making a mistake and his sojourn in the US was exactly that.Strachan should apologise after cheap shot at innocent target in war with the press

Strachan on his high horse and heading for a big fall

The refusal of certain football managers to talk to certain media outlets is as disrespectful (to supporters) as it is childish, but there are some managers who ought to be saved from themselves, and Gordon Strachan is rapidly turning into one of them.

For those who follow Scottish football closely, the Celtic manager's interaction with the Scottish media is, depending on your perspective, a treasure trove of witty one-liners or an urgent job for the massed ranks of the British Institute of Relationship Counsellors.

Either way, Strachan has great difficulty in hiding his contempt for the hacks. No doubt he thinks he has good cause, and maybe he does, but not even in his most self-justificatory moment can he can defend his response when asked by a female reporter, Michelle Evans of Real Radio, at the weekend to explain what had gone wrong for his Celtic side in the 1–0 Scottish Cup defeat to St Mirren.

"Explaining it to you is impossible," he said. "It would be like you explaining childbirth to me." The Celtic manager has been widely condemned as a sexist. I have no idea if he is a sexist (presumably not), but this particular response certainly was. There have been calls for Strachan's resignation. This won't happen, and nor should it, but at the very least he should apologise to the reporter involved – Michelle Evans of Real Radio – and he should do soin public; not as a concession of defeat in his endless war with the press but simply because it is the right thing to do.

Hiding corporate excess sums US banks up to a tee

Somewhere, somehow the notion appears to have taken root in the United States that professional golf is responsible for much of that country's economic ills, so much so that even companies who are paying to sponsor events on the PGA tour would rather not advertise the fact.

A bank called Wells Fargo is the latest to dress itself in the cloak of anonymity. Having purchased a failing bank called Wachovia, once proud sponsors of the Wachovia Championship, Wells Fargo found itself contractually obliged to sponsor the event but, in the face of intense Congressional and media scrutiny of corporate behaviour, publicly unwilling to acknowledge it.

Hence what was once the Wachovia Championship will now take its name from the venue and be called the Quail Hollow Championship, presumably in the hope that Senator John Kerry and the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who have been leading the anti-golf charge, won't notice that Wells Fargo is spending somewhere in the region of $10 million (£7 million) to stage and market a tournament.

Frankly, I don't think this genius plan is going to work.

Bet on this idea to succeed

Hands up if you dismissed the European Parliament long ago as a pointless talking shop. If so, then think again. On Tuesday the parliament voted in favour of wholesale regulation of the online gambling industry. At first glance, many of their proposed regulations seem overly intrusive but one certainly does not. The idea that individual sports should be able to command a levy from bookmakers who offer markets on that sport – and then use that money to protect against the dangers of corruption – is an idea whose time has surely come.

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